BICYCLING: What about Vaughters? He admitted doping in his career and he’s still deeply involved in the sport as manager of one of cycling’s top teams, Garmin?

Kimmage: Obviously Jonathan has been anti-doping for a long time now, and he’s someone I admire because of that, and I believe he’s been totally genuine about that. So how do you compare him and [Saxo Bank manager] Bjarne Riis—they’re opposite sides of a coin. OK, they both doped in their careers, but since then they’ve been total opposites. Definitely Jonathan Vaughters has an important role to play. I don’t think Riis should have any part in the sport.

BICYCLING: So you make an exception for Vaughters.

Kimmage: Well, that’s to say, that anyone who’s ever doped should have no part to play. Well, I’m not sure that’s going to work either. Maybe—I’m not sure. You look at politics in the north of Ireland. It was totally sickening for victims of the violence to see [Irish republican politician] Gerry Adams sitting down with [Northern Ireland politician] Ian Paisley. No one would have believed that would ever work given what they’d both done and what they’d said. But yet you look at what’s happened as a result of that and how much better things are in the north of Ireland. So it’s not the same in pro bike riding, but there is a lesson there. I’m going to have sit down with people I don’t like for the good of the sport in the belief they’ve changed. If they are genuine in their desire to change things, then you absolutely have to work with them. How do you gauge whether they’re genuine or not? I believe Jonathan is genuine. That’s not something I can say about a lot people.

BICYCLING: How has the doping culture in cycling changed since the publication of Rough Ride?

Kimmage: There’s one difference: The products were different. The mentality was exactly the same. That’s the only difference. All this stuff now—the transfusions and all that—didn’t happen then only because the nature of the product was different. The mentality was exactly the same; the culture was the same.

Is professional cycling any “dirtier” than pro football or baseball? I’d say not. When you’ve got to bring an event on the road for three weeks, in order to dope for something like that you actually have to bring it with you; you can’t hide away in some dressing room where nobody sees it. So it’s been exposed, and the nature of it is, the Tour de France is physically the most difficult sporting event in the world. The demands of that made doping and the temptations to dope more prevalent. Now it’s been exposed and we need to address that.

BICYCLING: You’ve been critical of Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins. Why?

Kimmage: The key things that I worry about with Sky are how dominant they were in the Tour—how dominant the whole team were. So it’s not one rider riding exceptionally well but a whole team riding exceptionally well—no bad days—and just incredibly thin and incredibly powerful at the same time. They’ve lost the weight but not the power. For me, that’s the question mark. It was interesting that [BMC’s] Cadel Evans—during the Olympics—sent out a tweet saying, Oh, I see the skinny guys are still winning time trials. How are these skinny guys winning time trials? Cadel’s a meaty fella—he’s got muscles. And he looks at these guys, these twigs, and how can they time trial so well? It defies logic for me.

And then the hiring of [Geert] Leinders just absolutely makes no sense to me. And if you look at their performance since 2010, if you look at the graph it’s gone like that [points finger upward]. Is it a coincidence that from the moment Leinders joins the team the graph goes up? I don’t know. I don’t like coincidences like that. That’s probably just an unfortunate coincidence that from moment that Geert Leinders joined the team they’ve put in these extraordinary performances. The blueprint for their success is the same Armstrong was using. They go to Tenerife, they’re trying to get altitude, all that sort of stuff. So you add that to their attitude in the press, to the staff members there, Yates, and you get a portrait that is, well, you have to be questioning anyway. The bottom line is, I don’t know. I don’t know whether Wiggins is clean. That’s a terrible thing to say, you know, but that’s the reality of it.

When Sky were launched in 2009, they were launched on the same, if you want, blueprint as Garmin. They were going to be transparent and anti-doping, and they made all these absolutely fantastic promises about how they were going to proceed with their team. And that was great. That’s what I actually wanted to hear. See, I actually don’t care about a team that wins the Tour de France. I don’t care about a rider who wins the Tour de France. I want a team I can believe in. I want a Tour de France rider I can believe in. And can I believe in Sky? No. Can I believe in Bradley Wiggins? I don’t know. And that’s terrible to say that now. I don’t know about Bradley Wiggins. You might say, Well, why not? OK, I’ll tell you why not. Transparency. Let’s talk about transparency. I was to come aboard and cover the Tour with Sky in 2010. I went and got myself organized; we had a camper van. And two days before the race [Sky manager] David Brailsford says to me, Sorry, Bradley’s not happy that you’re going to be here. OK, that’s a small point, you know. Maybe Bradley didn’t want me around for three weeks; he’s perfectly entitled to do that. At the Tour de France this year, you had a situation at the press conference on the very first rest day. Journalists are sitting there and Bradley Wiggins is sitting there, and the Sky press officer comes in and the first thing he says to the journalists is, We’ll have no questions about doping. No questions about doping. He tells all the journalists, We’ll have no questions about doping. Now what happened to the transparency? That doesn’t make sense to me. Since Wiggins has won the Tour they’ve fired at least three of their staff for involvement in doping. And what should be the crowning glory for Bradley Wiggins and British cycling is now a big question mark. People don’t know. I told this to David Brailsford a couple of weeks ago, that this should be your finest moment, and it’s a mess. And Brailsford is responsible for that mess. So I don’t know, and it’s really sad that we don’t know.

Kimmage: He’s a very complex guy—really, really complex. It would take you a long, long time to try and make sense of Bradley Wiggins. So already he’s a complex guy. But again, you look at the personality change in him since 2007 when he was struggling. I saw him at the Tour in 2007. He was coming in 25 minutes down. And how outspoken he was about doping at that time compared to now! It doesn’t make sense. If he was as outspoken five years ago, why aren’t you saying the same things now?